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Surviving: The Body of Evidence More than five years in development, Surviving: The Body of Evidence is Penn Museum’s most technologically ambitious exhibition ever. An extensive team of in-house and external experts have worked together to bring the exhibit to its opening day. Exhibition Curators
Dr. Monge has undertaken fieldwork in many locations in Europe, Kenya and Australia. Her primary research interests are in human evolution, skeletal biology, and the growth and development of extinct members of human evolutionary lineage. She also maintains a dedication to the preservation of museum collections. She has developed methodologies to preserve and broadcast data sets to the physical anthropology community using Computed Tomography (CT scans), traditional radiology, and human dental micro-anatomy. She also established a system of distribution of the highest quality castings of human fossils to universities and museums all over the world. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Monge and P. Thomas Schoenemann, a Penn Museum Research Associate, are developing a “virtual museum” of skeletal collections so that researchers from all around the world can access CT scans of the Penn Museum collection to incorporate into their own research design. As Associate Director of the Casting Program, she and director Dr. Alan Mann manage its over 3000 molds and casts representing every phase of human evolution—the world’s largest such collection, tapped extensively for the Surviving exhibition.
His primary interest is in the fossil evidence for human evolution and he has done fieldwork in South and East Africa, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, Croatia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany, and now works primarily in the southwest of France. His current research focuses on the evolution of the Neandertals and their relationships to modern peoples. He is particularly interested in the origin of language and its importance in the emergence of the quality of ‘humanness’. He is co-director of the excavation of a Middle Paleolithic Neandertal site in the Charente Department of southwest France. Dr. Mann is the author of Some Paleodemographic Aspect of the South African Australopithecines and is co-author, with Mark Weiss, of Human Biology and Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, as well as more than 75 articles in professional journals and popular magazines. He has also written a children’s book on human evolution. He has been a consultant for the National Geographic Society and is the Anthropology consultant for the World Book Encyclopedia. REICH + PETCH DESIGN INTERNATIONAL,
Exhibit Designers and Planners CHEDD-ANGIER-LEWIS, Exhibit Multi-Media Developers Chedd-Angier Lewis developed all of the audio, visual and computer interactives featured in Surviving. Their team of experts shot and compiled all of the footage for the three content films on scars of evolution. Under the direction of Richard Lewis, Chedd-Angier-Lewis has developed more than 1,000 media programs for 150 major museums and visitor centers worldwide. Founded in 1979 by the team that created public television’s Nova series, the company has developed more than 200 one-hour specials for broadcast by PBS and the BBC, winning three National EMMY Awards and a host of other prizes. more info>> HOUSE OF KEVIN INC., Exhibit Fabricators BLUE SKY DESIGN, Exhibit Interpreter PENN MUSEUM SURVIVING TEAM
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Dr. Janet Monge is Acting Curator of the Physical Anthropology section, Keeper of the Physical Anthropology collection, and Associate Director of the Casting Program, at Penn Museum. She also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, and has taught courses at Bryn Mawr College and Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Alan Mann is a physical anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Emeritus Curator of Physical Anthropology at Penn Museum. He also holds a research appointment in the Anthropology Laboratory of the University of Bordeaux. He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley.